ACTIVE SOCIAL ADAPTATION 297 
“that the only welfare there is, is the welfare of persons present 
or to come.” ! 
Ross formulates the following canons as to the limits of social 
control: ?— 
1. Each increment of social interference should bring more 
benefit to persons as members of society than it entails incon- 
venience to persons as individuals. 
2. Social interference should not lightly excite against itself the 
passion for liberty. 
3. Social interference should respect the sentiments that are 
the support of natural order. 
4. Social interference should not be so paternal as to check the 
self-extinction of the morally ill-constituted. 
5. Social interference should not so limit the struggle for 
existence as to nullify the selective process. 
The criteria of social control are economy, inwardness (reaching 
the feelings, reason and will), simplicity, and spontaneity, fostered 
by diffusion, — as in public opinion, suggestion, social religion and 
art. 
His conclusion harmonizes his theory of social control with the 
position we are advocating: — 
The better adaptation of animals to one another appears to be brought 
about by accumulated changes in body and brain. The better adaptation of 
men to one another is brought about, not only in this way, but also by the 
improvement of the instruments that constitute the apparatus of social 
control. In the same way that the improvement of optical instruments 
checks the evolution of the eye, and the improvement of tools checks the 
evolution of the hand, the improvement of instruments of control checks the 
evolution of the social instincts. The goal of social development is not, as 
some imagine, a perfect love, or a perfect conscience, but better adaptation; 
and the more this is artificial, the less need it be natural. 
Ross does not believe that any one form of control is adapted to 
all races and temperaments, but that under the influence of social 
forces, the form of control best suited to a people is the one 
selected, and that those in authority should study and use these 
means of control though, as in the case of supernatural religion, 
they may rest on illusion.‘ 
1 Social Control, p. 418. 8 Tbid., p. 437. 
2 Ibid., pp. 419 f. 4 Ibid., p. 441. 
